The Nature of Statistics

Public intervention, Vrbnik, Krk

Public intervention, Vrbnik, Krk

Photo by Mark Požlep

Public intervention, Vrbnik, Krk

Vinyl Coated Tablecloth │ print on vinyl │ 2014Dimension variable

The use of the word statistics in daily life is mostly related to figures that we use in order to try to describe important characteristics of a group of data. However, analyzing statistics exclusively as figures frequently end here. Portraits of women who got their names from (Jagoda lat. Fragaria - strawberry, Dunja lat. Cydonia oblonga - quince, Višnja lat. Prunus cerasus – sour cherry) and flowers (Iris lat. Iris - iris, Ruža lat. Rosa - rose, Kala lat. Zantedeschia aethiopica – arum lily) constitute a personification of statistical data.Through such a contextualization of statistical data I speak about the problem of the unfavorable and subordinated social, legal and socio-economic position of women in the modern capitalism and patriarchal society through current statistical data presented in the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the work of Lana Čmjačanin called “The Nature of Statistics” the personification of nature is double: personal and statistical. The typical representative woman-nature relation is no longer passive denotation. The material nature of the statistics of position of women in BiH is wordless, while the nature becomes personal, political, public, live space of female voices, names, their visibility standing behind all these numbers and their passive politics.